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S2 Ep14: Broncos Trample Packers
72 Plays2 years ago
Aloha and Welcome to another episode of OPE! After another dreadful performance, we discuss the little bits of good the lots of bit of bad and anything in between.
Please subscribe and gives us a like also check out our website ohanapackers.org
Please subscribe and gives us a like also check out our website ohanapackers.org
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Transcript
Concerns Post Bye Week: Packers' Performance
00:00:29
Speaker
Aloha and welcome back to another edition of the Ohana Packers Edition podcast. The podcast where two dudes from halfway around the world talk everything green and gold. I'm Mike and that's Iowa Joe. Haha, got the point right this time. Unlike the Packers. Joe, just more of the same this week. And honestly, it's getting to the point where it's getting a little bit concerning with where this team is trending right now. But
00:00:57
Speaker
First game out of the bye. I know we kind of talked about what we were hoping to see, but Joe, I take it from intuition that you didn't see what you wanted to see today from the team either.
NFL Broadcast Policies: Are They Too Restrictive?
00:01:09
Speaker
Well, I'm going to get on my soapbox real quick because I've got a bone and it needs to be picked and it involves the NFL and they need to get their shit together that no more of this select people can only watch select games because it's ridiculous. I mean, we're in the day and age that I can flip on a streaming service and watch whatever fucking movie I want or whatever TV show I want from whatever ridiculous area I want.
00:01:39
Speaker
And I can now even get movies that are still in the theater on my like Amazon Prime or whatever. But I still am always stuck with certain games that I can watch, unless I want to pop out, you know, 1000 bucks a fucking year. Well, I'm sorry, I'm not the richest person in the world.
00:01:57
Speaker
I'm not going to pop out, you know, it's not like I can drop a thousand bucks. Well, I guess it's what it's 500 for the actual thing. And it's 75 a month for YouTube TV or whatever. So you're looking at like 700, 800 dollars. And yeah, I don't have that to be dropping on just six months. So and then, you know, the NFL wonders why
00:02:23
Speaker
People are using pirated streams and you know VPNs and shit like that to get around this stuff Well, you know, it's because we don't have the money to put up there's over a billion people a year that watch the NFL and that's not an exaggeration there's over a billion people a year that watch NFL games and
00:02:47
Speaker
You gotta make it easy for these people to watch. You know, you holler about you want people more interested in this and you want the interactions with that. You're gonna start losing them if we can't start getting the games we want. I'm sorry, I don't give a rat's ass about the Chargers or the Chiefs. And that's the game we were stuck with here in my area. So I just, okay.
00:03:14
Speaker
Now to go on to the rant with the rest
Offensive Miscommunication: The Need for Veterans
00:03:17
Speaker
of it. No, I didn't see what I wanted. It was more of the same and I got in an argument with a guy on Twitter. It's not just a single person fault. I mean, I could understand if you know we had a Josh McDaniel effect.
00:03:35
Speaker
where the play calling shit, the player, you know, you still got to, and all that, you know, the offense is shit. The play call is shit. The, where you can center it on one single person, but I'm sorry, you can't, Matt, the floor can't run the routes for the wide receivers. And we saw more of that shit today where the wide receivers were running wrong routes, or we had three wide receivers running the same damn route in the same damn area.
00:04:05
Speaker
Uh, they can't open the lanes for the running game. The coaches can't run the ball. The coaches can't play defense. The code, you know, you can only blame so much on the defense before you start having to look at the players.
00:04:23
Speaker
And it's not like we have bad players. It's a young team. We all knew this. This is why, you know, like I did, you did, Mike, and a lot of other people did were saying, you know, pounding the table. We need veterans in here. This is what a veteran is there for.
00:04:40
Speaker
The veteran is somebody that the, you know, so the coach doesn't always have to be that single voice. The veteran adds an extra voice in there to, you know, hey, you did the wrong thing on this route. Next time you need to, instead of running, you know, five yards, you need to go a little bit deeper, you know, go 10 yards and then turn in, or you need to cut as soon as the ball is snapped. You know, that's what a good veteran is there for.
00:05:05
Speaker
That's what Mercedes was there for. I know I sound like a broken record saying that we should re-sign Mercedes Lewis, but, you know, when Tonyan had his big year, he credited Mercedes Lewis with, you know, helping him with that stuff. Well, you don't get that when everybody is a first or second year player.
00:05:29
Speaker
You've only got the coaches to rely on. Well, if your coaches are struggling with it, then your players are going to struggle with it. If your players are struggling with it, your coach is going to struggle with it because he can only say so much to that person before they're just going to, you know, it goes in one ear and out the other. So yes, this whole team is not great.
00:05:52
Speaker
The defense has been looking better in a way. I mean, realistically, they held the, you know, what was it? It was three field goals and a touchdown. So they held them to three field goals in the first half and a touchdown in the second half. And that was pretty much their scoring, right? I mean, I missed half the game because of the whole NFL thing, but
Packers' Defensive Struggles: Injuries and Communication
00:06:21
Speaker
You know, it was 19 to 17 or something like that. So it, the defense was doing its part with what they could do. Now, another thing that we're having issues with is the injuries are starting to pile up. Why it went down with a knee injury.
00:06:43
Speaker
Uh, uh, Watson went down with a knee injury. Savage is down with some kind of injury. The same calf. Yup. Uh, Stokes is now dealing with a quad injury. They said he had an ice on his quad. Uh, and so he was out. Uh,
00:07:02
Speaker
Myers I I hate to say this but I was kind of slowly rooting for Myers to be taken out Because they slotted in Zach Tom at Center and they started to produce just a wee little bit Now funny that it took a Myers injury to call the trick play Yeah But they were still able to complete it you know there wasn't now Rasheed Walker and
00:07:32
Speaker
I like the guy. I really do. I think the potential is there, but you can tell he's a second year guy. That was a seventh round draft pick right now. He's going to need the work. He's going to need the play time. You're kind of stuck with it at the moment, but now we know Zach Tom can play center. I mean, we all had the idea because the floor and Gudakun stall said, I'll have said for the longest time that Zach Tom's best position is probably center in the NFL.
00:08:02
Speaker
But they already had Josh Myers and all this. But now we know for sure he can play center. Is it time we move Josh Myers out of there? And put slot nine minute right tackle and leave Rashad out at left guard. I mean left tackle and then have Runyon and Jenkins in there.
00:08:27
Speaker
I thought Runyon had a hell of a game too. I didn't think he was that bad today, what I saw of it. But I'm going to stop talking for a moment and let Mike kind of throw in here because I feel like I've been ranting for too long now. No, I totally agree with you. Yeah, the broadcast rules are stupid because
00:08:47
Speaker
forget the regionality and all that kind of stuff, but just the whole like the overtime rules and when they decide to cut away and stuff like that, it's it's archaic, honestly. But like you said, enough of that. But yeah, they're they're reaching the point where on defense, yeah, you're just dealing with so many injuries at this point that you're you're running light on your you know, you're you're running with half of your preferred guys basically at this point.
00:09:17
Speaker
you know, the cyclone finally got some snaps. I thought he did a couple of good things, had a couple of rough plays, but you know, like we, we've been kind of talking about, that's why you need to play him is because he needs to get on the field and stuff. But yeah, the offense, um, I know that's, we're going to focus most of this podcast on, but there's another disappointing first half of the game for them. Like you said, it's, it's not a single thing to point to. It is a failure on every level of the offense where it's, um,
00:09:47
Speaker
Like you said, it's guys who don't know what route they're supposed to run. You had to play where there's a third down.
00:09:55
Speaker
I think Watson ran the wrong route based on how everyone else reacted to the play. But, I mean, Jayden Reed almost ran him over because he wasn't expecting him to be there. Yeah. Is that one where it looked like three, three guys ran
Offensive Struggles: Identity Crisis and Play Calling
00:10:09
Speaker
the same route because they were all in the same. It was like Musgraves. Yeah. I think I have to look at the old 22, but I think Musgrave was running like an outside hitch kind of thing.
00:10:19
Speaker
Um, let's say, uh, read definitely is running a speed out and the way he reacts, he looks like he's expecting that Watson is supposed to be running a speed out as well. And it would have been open. Like it was there and stuff, but, um,
00:10:35
Speaker
just inexcusable, especially for one of your supposed returning starters to be making that kind of mental error in his second year. It's not a rookie doing it. It's one of your quote unquote veterans who's making that kind of error. But again, the game plan, it was so screen heavy. I tweeted it out during the game that
00:10:58
Speaker
screens are supposed to be like a change up, a curve ball. You're not supposed to call it every other or every third play or no one's going to be fooled by it. So you lose effectiveness on screens.
00:11:12
Speaker
Yeah, I thought, like you said, I thought Runyon had a solid game. I thought Tom looked a lot healthier out at tackle. He looked, you know, it was only like four snaps or something, but I thought he looked pretty solid playing center and Yosh looked good when he came in at right tackle. But, you know, it's the...
00:11:33
Speaker
It's hard to say what's the most disappointing part of the offense, like you said, because it was all disappointing at different points of the game. It's not any one thing that you can point to and say that's the thing that you should fix.
00:11:49
Speaker
But the disappointing part in that is coming off of the buy, you're still springing leaks all over the boat. You didn't plug any of the holes over the buy. Like you said, you've got busted assignments in the run game. They tried to call plays to kind of give Rashid Walker a bone and he had a rough
00:12:09
Speaker
sequence of like three to four run plays where he was just a turnstile you know they they were calling plays where they're trying to get him on the move out in space on a couple tosses they were trying to call some pin and pulls where all he had to do was seal a guy inside and he was just you could tell because his head was doing a radar dish he's spinning in a full circle on every play um rough sequence and then you you know you have the guar where it's like well you just block somebody's to you know give
00:12:37
Speaker
um give guys a chance and you know the the ultimate irony of it is i thought aj dillon played one of his best games in basically two years he he was aggressive running i thought all of his you know all two or three of his negative runs were not at all his fault maybe one of them
00:12:53
Speaker
it wasn't even a negative run it went for like two yards it probably should have gone for like four because he should have just gone straight kind of thing but the the runs where he lost yardage on none of them were his fault because he never had a chance on any of them and jones looked good and you know everyone's saying like use jones use jones the problem is is that he's coming off an injury the the last couple games where they've tried to reintegrate him
00:13:18
Speaker
the Detroit game, he got depleted like every time he touched the ball. And then he was a mystery last minute inactive against the Raiders a couple of weeks ago. So he figured that he was gonna have limited opportunities. And he was Aaron Jones in the times that he did touch the ball. But that's the big disappointment on offense, the overarching theme of it is that.
00:13:42
Speaker
Yeah, love was a relative unknown going into the season. Lafleur's play calling with love was a relative unknown, but the elements of the offense that the team was supposed to rely on, the O-line and the run game have been a distinct just.
00:13:58
Speaker
shortcoming of what we were hoping and expecting them to be going into the season and because of that you're not getting a good read on what love is outside of when he makes mistakes which you know we'll get into but they're not good to see from a guy who's in his fourth year in the offense and
00:14:16
Speaker
the floor is just struck. You can tell that he's just struggling. He's spinning his wheels in the mud because it's it's that whole. OK, when you you know when you when you struggle, you go to what your offense as identity is. We've seen a lot of think pieces on it. This Packers offense doesn't have an identity. You know it's supposed to be the run game and playing off of it. The run game, the run blocking has sucked so far this season. Like I said, today was one of their best games, but how much of that is because you're playing a bad Broncos front 7.
00:14:45
Speaker
But, um, to kind of, even though Dylan looked better today, I think there was still a couple of times that you could, you know, he like reverted back because there was like a couple of times that.
00:15:00
Speaker
Danced a little bit too much in the backfield or he made the wrong read. Like, you know, he, if he would have went to one side, he would have had room to run, but instead he like cut left and got bottled up. So I saw a few of that, but again, I'm not like an analysis type guy that analytics where I can sit here and say, Oh, well, you know, he should have hit the B gap instead of the A gap. Um, but it just looked to me that,
00:15:28
Speaker
He danced a little bit and then made the wrong read because if he would have went one way, he would have got a little bit more yards. He went the other way and he got minimal. So yeah, he still had a good game, but he's still making the same mistakes. And like you were just saying with Jordan Love, he's a fourth year guy. He shouldn't be making those, you know, he should be a little bit more better with this offense. We're still seeing, whereas I can give Jordan Love a little bit of a pass because he's still only started seven games so far.
00:15:57
Speaker
How many games has AJ Dillon played? Yeah, and so the mistakes I'm mostly talking about are later in the game. The first half, I haven't watched the game back, but the first half, I didn't think there was much of anything more that Love could have really done with what they were asking him to do. Everything, you know, it was basically like,
00:16:18
Speaker
the floor over corrected. He was like, OK, the downfield passing game isn't working, so we're going to keep everything, you know, quick hitting, short screen game, whatever, whatever you want to call it. And, you know, love, I think he was like 10 or 13 or something in the first half, but he was averaging like three point six yards a throw or something like that. So, you know, the completion percentage was up. But, you know, if you're only looking at the stats, it doesn't paint the picture of why the completion percentage was up. And then
00:16:49
Speaker
It just seemed like the floor was still, I don't know whether the word is scared, babysitting, whatever you want to call it, overcompensating for whatever the O-line has done in Paspero, whatever you want to call it the past couple of weeks. But the game plan reflected a play caller who didn't trust his O-line to protect properly.
00:17:10
Speaker
Excuse me. And you saw the effects of that where, like I said, everything was short. Everything was a truncated routes scheme. You saw a lot of wide receiver screens. Some of them worked. Dobbs had one that went for 14 yards. But then you saw other ones like the one Reed got hurt on at the end of the first half where both the guards didn't block anybody. And you just see that Reed is kind of dead to rights. And that was the play before Anders missed the field goal.
00:17:40
Speaker
And we're going to touch on that Matt Schneiderman. But it was just disappointing because it felt like instead of trying to
00:17:54
Speaker
established an identity, LeFlore was like, I'm so worried about X, Y, and Z happening that I'm going to call an overly conservative game plan. And it handicapped what the offense was able to do in the first half. And then when they started to get back to more of the concepts that worked the first few weeks of the season, you saw the offense move the ball a little bit better. And
00:18:17
Speaker
they were able to gain subtraction in the first half. So, you know, it's frustrating because while, you know, like I said, love has been in the system for
Jordan Love's Performance: Decision-Making and Accuracy
00:18:30
Speaker
four years. Yes, it's only his seventh start.
00:18:33
Speaker
I know Lafleur is in his seventh game calling games for love, but it's kind of looking like the end of the McCarthy era where plays are getting called out of sequence or there don't seem to be necessarily building plays together that play off of each other. To interrupt your thought here. No, no, no, go for it.
00:18:58
Speaker
And again, I got to repeat, I'm not an analytics guy, so I can't really. But in my layman's view, I wonder if the reason why some of these plays are getting called out of rhythm and that is to try finding something that's going to get Jordan confidence.
00:19:16
Speaker
He's still trying to build, you know, still trying to run a game plan, but bill or build around Jordans, you know, what's going to get him a quick hitter, what's going to get him, you know, to complete the pass, what's going to get him to stop predetermining things. And we saw that again today, especially late in the game, that last interception to seal the game. Andy Herman was kind of talking about this. And I saw a lot of other guys on Twitter talking about this.
00:19:46
Speaker
that it looked like he predetermined that throw deep to Dobbs when he had Aaron Jones opening free on a screen.
00:20:00
Speaker
And if he would have just took a second more to make his reads that possibly he could have hit Jones and had a and at least got him into field goal range to for a chance to win. Now I know you're going to you'll usually have to go through the all 22 to see what's happening with that. And we'll probably talk about that a little bit more.
00:20:22
Speaker
in our next episode, but just me watching that and then seeing what some guys were posting on Twitter, you know, that I think Jordan's still predetermining. And I think the floor is trying to make play calls to get him out of that predetermined.
00:20:43
Speaker
All right. You got to make this you got to make this play. You know, like there was a couple of read options, one specifically where it looked like he honestly and you probably saw this when you were doing a lot of your your pre draft stuff, whenever you'd watch the Stanford film where the quarterback just sit there and, you know, they were standing in the pocket doing an RPO
00:21:10
Speaker
and it took him six seconds to get the RPO red. And that's what it kind of looked like with one of them with Dylan was it was an RPO and he just kept holding the ball off to Dylan. And then finally he broke free and tried to make a read on it. Of course, I think later, whatever. Yeah. So the, the, the one where he predetermined that was actually the, the, the one where they got the field goal out of. So, um,
00:21:36
Speaker
It doesn't look, you know, it's hard to say when you're pulling it from only the broadcast angle and some stills, but it definitely looked like that, ironically, that screen had a chance. But, oh, look, when you actually run other plays, other than screens, every other play, a screen will get you. And it would have gotten them, you know, a fresh set of downs to, you know, I think they would have been in goal to goal, in a goal to goal situation. So,
00:22:00
Speaker
You know, that will, and I even commented on that when I was like, yeah, you, you, like you said, Joe, you got to go through your progressions. You can't, you can't make predetermined reads. And if you are, you have to throw the ball, you know, whether it's on the fringe of inbounds, but that ball he threw to Dobbs on the fade stop, it didn't have a chat, you know, Dobbs didn't have a chance in hell of catching it. So it's like, okay.
00:22:23
Speaker
It's cool if you're going to just say, hey, I'm going for the end zone on this play. But you've got to give your guy a chance. And we've seen Dobbs make that play a couple of times this season on a goal line fade. And we've seen Jordan make that throw a couple of times this season. Yeah. And he just wasn't even really getting that much pressure. I think he was just like, I just got to get it out there. And even his interception at the end of the game, some people were saying, what are you doing?
00:22:51
Speaker
My thing is watching that drive under my breath I said once Jenkins got called for holding I was like that might be curtains because you get a holding on that kind of a game situation late in the game that just it just torpedoes your drive and it puts you so far behind.
00:23:11
Speaker
He still had a shot at enough time that if he would have made us, you know, a different read that they would have gotten to field goal range. Get guaranteed the player got out of, you know, whoever caught the ball got out of bounds or whatever. Yeah. They were still within range to hit field goal range. And then, so, you know, Herman
00:23:31
Speaker
Andy did a breakdown of it, and I agree. At first, Andy was saying it was a terrible decision. I don't think it was. I thought it was an okay decision, especially given the game situation. It's second and 20, or third and 20. My whole thing was that throw, just like the one before where Watson might have gotten really badly injured on, the throw was just awful. Turi is open.
00:23:56
Speaker
Um, love makes the correct determination that he's got a receiver isolated on a safety, you know, whatever you may or may not think of to rate that is supposed to be an advantage for the offense. And Simmons is like, he's in, um, he's doing like the combine drill where the DB is backpedaling and then has to bail into, you know, he has to do a full spin to bail to catch up to our route. That's basically where he's got Simmons. The problem is, is that, and I think.
00:24:24
Speaker
You look at even the touchdown that he did get to Dobbs.
00:24:28
Speaker
Love, I don't know what it is. I don't know if it's just he can't throw deep. I don't know if it's all the emphasis in the offseason between the floor and love on getting arc under the ball. I don't know what it is, but that throw was about five yards short depth wise. But more importantly, that ball needed to be out towards the the top of the numbers. And what I mean is when you look at the field from the broadcast angle,
00:24:56
Speaker
the top of the numbers is when you're looking at the numbers and they're right side up to you that's the top of the number the bottom of the number is the side of the number closer to the sideline yeah that throw needs to be out there because tury is running a deep over route and you've got him running away from the other safety who makes the interception but love you know and
00:25:17
Speaker
If you get all nerdy about it, the ball floats different in the thin air and stuff like that. So, you know, you combine trying to put air under the ball with maybe the thin air, but loves just got to, if he's going to make, if he's going to pull the trigger on that throw, you just got to, you've just got to put your weight behind it and swing for the fences on that. I thought you kind of saw shades of that on the touchdown throw to dogs where, um,
00:25:43
Speaker
I thought he tried to make the perfect pass instead of just letting it rip. And luckily Dobbs was able to kind of bail him out on that one. And I didn't get to see that one. My stream crept out. So it was kind of like the way I likened it on Twitter was it was the play against Cincinnati in the preseason. It just they just ran it in the opposite direction. But it was basically the same thing where if
00:26:10
Speaker
with how much separation Dobbs had from Sertan on that play just throw it at the back pylon that to the side that he's running to don't try and touch pass it in there kind of thing and stuff and I seen people say like oh why didn't he throw it earlier in the progression there's pressure coming off the edge and stuff and I gotta take a look at the all 20 to do to see if he could have thrown it earlier but I thought he did the right move to step up in the pocket there but I think
00:26:36
Speaker
There's instances where he's pre-determining where to go with the ball before the snap. And there's others where he's trying too hard to make the perfect throw. And it's causing issues for him when it comes time to make passes. And like I said, the touchdown to Dobbs is one where it worked out. And the interception is one where it burned him and the team in the end.
00:26:57
Speaker
Well, kind of add on to what you're saying is he also needs to learn to win to speed up and slow down his throws because it looks like he tries to rush it. So he's throwing a fastball when really he should be throwing a changeup.
00:27:12
Speaker
Uh, it kind of almost bit him in the ass and that second touchdown, because, you know, it bounced off, uh, Dobbs his hands and luckily it ricocheted right into, uh, Jaden Reed's hands for the touchdown. Whereas if he would have slowed that down just a hair.
00:27:32
Speaker
it would have been an okay play for Dobbs to make just like, you know, like we're saying, not without going over the all 22 and whatever, but it looked like he put too much fire on that. And that's why I ricocheted off of Dobbs. And again, luckily Jane Reed was had the awareness awareness to make the catch off the ricochet.
00:27:52
Speaker
Yeah, so like I said, that's the recap on Love. He made some plays, had the team with the lead late in the game. But quite honestly, it was too little, too late. And the fact they were in the game speaks more to what kind of team Denver is than Green Bay figuring it out kind of thing and stuff. And so at the sixth game mark,
00:28:22
Speaker
the issues with love is what we were kind of talking about in the preseason where we need to see an elimination of some of the errors that are, you know, have been there since week one where, you know, he's starting to up his accuracy a little bit, you know, whether that's, you know, by proxy in terms of, you know, just throws are shorter and stuff, whatever, you know, he's giving guys more opportunities to make plays. Okay. That's a good thing. But at the same time,
00:28:51
Speaker
he is missing opportunities to make bigger plays in games. And at some point, push comes to shove, you've got to start making better decisions. And I don't want to say the hard part about it, but the floor, the Shanahan offense, there is a level of the ball should go to this guy to it. And it's not
00:29:16
Speaker
that's not at all an excuse of love. He still has to go through progressions, make the right read, deliver good passes. Like I said, the throw where Watson got hurt on, that's a terrible throw. The interception, that's a terrible throw. The touchdown to Dobbs
00:29:32
Speaker
It's a good outcome, but it was a bad throw kind of thing. So it, I liken the touchdown to Dobbs as when a pitcher throws a off speed pitch in the wrong spot and the hitter cranks it to the warning track, but there's two out. So it, you know, it's a good outcome, but it's, it was almost a disaster. So a little bit too early and, you know, yeah, it rolls over it kind of thing and stuff, feet foul or whatever. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So to kind of finalize our whole thing on here.
00:30:01
Speaker
After, you know, what are we, we're going into week eight. What are we feeling on Jordan Love so far? Because we both kind of said last episode that this was going to be like the make or break type of game for Jordan Love. What, how are we feeling on, on him now just to give him our week eight, you know, grade so far?
00:30:24
Speaker
So right now, putting it in college terms, he's getting some flags on his progress report. It's hard to put it in those terms, but he's getting some incompletes on projects. He needs to do better on his midterm. Like I said, the arrow is trending down right now. How steep of a down, that's up to semantics.
00:30:53
Speaker
We haven't seen that step forward that you've wanted to see from him. Like I said, he's making plays, but the problem is that in between making the splash plays, there's too much where the offense isn't doing anything or he's turning the ball over. And no, those aren't necessarily all on love, but
00:31:13
Speaker
want to see the signs of a guy that he can overcome. Like I said, there are too many things going wrong at the same time on offense. But you want to see the signs of a guy who's going to overcome some of those issues. And obviously, he can't overcome guys running the wrong routes. But like I said, when the opportunities are there for him to make plays,
00:31:38
Speaker
those are the the times that and i know that it's it's unfair to say that he can't miss but he can't do what he did on that interception that that ended the game like those are the kind of throws like if he throws it long and he or he throws it wide and turi doesn't have a chance at the ball okay like that's not good either but you still have another down to try and do something
00:32:00
Speaker
But to come up so woefully short on a throw that it leads to a game ending interception, that's the kind of thing that he cannot be doing. And like I said, the issues are he's having plays where he's making pre-snap determinations on where to go, not going through progressions.
00:32:20
Speaker
terrible ball placement on plays that are there to be made. Those are the ones that are solely in his control. And we're still seeing those things prop up too many times and at the worst time of games. And that's why the arrow is trending downward for me at this point. And it's not like you see some who are saying it's doom and gloom and it's over. It's not over, but we need to see something that makes you think otherwise. And that's where, like we said, that's kind of why you and I pointed to this game as a
00:32:50
Speaker
Maker break might be too strong, but you needed to see something that was going to change your mind that yeah, like the ship is getting turned. Like I said, it can be burning around down around him, but at least we can say love pulled his weight and. It was looking like he was for most of the game, but towards the end it was like. Still making the same mistakes and it cost the team at the end and like I said, it's not fair necessarily, but when you're the quarterback, that's the kind of microscope you're under an.
00:33:20
Speaker
that kind of going back into the talks we did about what do we need to see? What determines if he's worth an extension? If he can't make those plays with this team needs him to when the game is on the line, you can't pay our version of Daniel Jones $40 million a
Jordan Love's Future: Can He Lead the Team?
00:33:39
Speaker
year. So that's where I'm at right now. Like I said, it's not signed, sealed, delivered, but the current trends are not great so far. Yeah, I completely agree.
00:33:50
Speaker
I'm not ready to completely give up on him, but I'm also not ready to see him in as, you know, the next face of the franchise. He's got a lot. I mean, I use this game as a make or break because this was the type of game they should have won just because of how crappy a team Denver has been throwing out there.
00:34:16
Speaker
Next week is going to be kind of the same thing you've got I believe it's the Vikings and you're playing the Vikings and the Vikings haven't been that great But they should be giving you more of a fit than what Denver did so if you go in there against Minnesota like you did against both the Raiders and the Broncos and
00:34:39
Speaker
You're not going to do yourself any favors. Now, if you come out and you play like you did against, you know, second half Saints first, you know, part of the game against the Falcons.
00:34:54
Speaker
And like you did against the Bears, you're going to have a better shot. And of course, like we keep saying, you know, one of the big problems is injuries. You know, I was just trying to look it up and, you know, the major fear is some kind of ACL or MCL damage to Watson or at best, maybe a bone bruise or whatever that to keep them out a couple of weeks.
00:35:19
Speaker
But, you know, that sucks. And I also saw a lot of people like calling Watson a bust. Are they forgetting that this kid was super raw coming out of college?
00:35:34
Speaker
I mean, this kid played for a, played in a system that had a very slim route tree. It wasn't even really a tree. It was more like a branch more than anything because they didn't run a lot of passing plays. It was a strictly run team. He's got all the ability in the world. Yes. We're having issues with injuries right now. Yes. He's not looking that great out there, but this is year two, year two.
00:36:03
Speaker
I don't know about you, Mike, but when I started doing my draft scouting stuff, you know, long time ago,
00:36:12
Speaker
The rule of thumb was always you had three years for a player. The first year was to get yourself NFL ready, meaning, you know, get up to speed because you know, you're not in college anymore. So you've got to get in and get used to the speed of the NFL year. And the length of the season. Yeah. And the length of the season year two was your, okay. Now you need to start learning the playbook better.
00:36:37
Speaker
Now you need to get more reps, you need to get in there, you need to get to integrated. Year three is where it really counts because year three should be the year that everything comes together and then that's when you start producing.
Patience with Young Players: Development Phases
00:36:51
Speaker
Well, the only time that the three year rule doesn't matter is when you're that top five talent, you know, like, oh, Calvin Johnson, or, you know, some guy like that, where they're basically NFL ready when they're still playing in college. You know, they'll come out and be a superstar on day one. That's when the three year rule does not matter.
00:37:18
Speaker
But anything outside of that, the three-year rule matters because what people fail to remember is in college, you play what? 10, 12 games at most? In the NFL, you're playing at least 16 games. 17 now with the week 17, whatever. But if you're a playoff team, you're playing up to 20, 21 games.
00:37:47
Speaker
Yep. They're not used to that. So you still got to remember these guys are learning. It's a young team. Not everybody's looking good. You can't hold them to the same standard as you would a fifth or sixth year player.
00:38:03
Speaker
That's why, and I know I sound like a broken record, I know I beat that horse to death, that's why they need a veteran on the team to help alleviate some of that. Where you're not relying on a first year or second year player so much, because you've got that wily vet that you can lean on in those cases.
00:38:27
Speaker
So for all these guys calling Watson a bust or Watson is terrible or making fun of people because I still like Watson shut up. I mean, just shut up.
00:38:38
Speaker
Give it time. Let the kid get fully healthy. Let the kid get some time in the offense. You realize he's going from Aaron Rodgers to Jordan Love. It would be different if this was year two with Aaron Rodgers or this was year two with Jordan Love. He's going from different quarterbacks.
00:38:57
Speaker
It's still the same system, but you're still building off of different play calls like we were just talking about earlier. You got to give these guys a break. Do I like seeing my team lose constantly? Hell no, I don't like seeing it, but I'm also not going to throw a fit over it because I know I know it's a young team and we were going to have these growing pains.
00:39:21
Speaker
Yeah and like I said that's where it's hard to isolate love's play because you know his over and you can't just point to his overall stats the interceptions yes that's like the ones that you can say like he's throwing too many interceptions and even that there's some context that you need to take into account and like I said that's where my evaluation of love is
00:39:46
Speaker
There's plays where he has no chance. Like I said, the one where Watson ran the wrong route and he's throwing to where Watson should be and he's not there. There's nothing he can do about that. The plays where he's got a chance and he comes up short, those are the ones that, you know, like I said, fair or not, you know, there might be only like two or three of them a game.
00:40:06
Speaker
But those are the ones that yeah, you got to make those win when you know Like we say everyone is complaining about how this offense looks disjointed this you know this and that the floor sucks this year He's nothing without whatever it may be The floor is still calling a few plays every game where someone is busting wide-ass open downfield Love has to start hitting those plays Jamavski posted this that where he's like 6 of 22 with three interceptions on plays 20 plus yards down the field
00:40:38
Speaker
You know, and I seen some people say like they gotta start taking plays out of the playbook where you know you're you're making certain throws downfield. No, if that's the case in year four, like I said. Yes, I know it's his first full season starting, but you cannot be truncating the playbook. You cannot be truncating a whole section of the playbook because your quarterback cannot make a throw beyond a certain distance. Like I said, we as Packer fans want love to work out because one, it means that.
00:41:06
Speaker
the organization can expend resources on other parts of the team. Yes, all the time and effort put into developing love has paid off, but if you cannot run your full playbook because your quarterback cannot make certain throws, that means he's not your quarterback and you've got to go get another one. So like I said, it's not said and done, but
00:41:29
Speaker
it's not trending in a good direction. We haven't seen any uptick in downfield throwing accuracy or just success rate, things like that. I know Dobbs dropped the one early in the game that would have changed. He had the drop in the first half that would have adjusted the success rate on throws over 20 plus. So even there, it's not all on love, but
00:41:51
Speaker
there's been a lot of opportunities where guys have been wide open and they haven't had a shot because Love's been off target with his throw. So like I said, those are the ones that I'm grading and harshest on, but going from things that we, talking about things that we can and can't see to things where we have many, many opinions on the defense. And just like the Raiders game, it was another stereotypical Barry game where there are plays where you pull your hair out. There are plays where
00:42:21
Speaker
The Denver touchdown is a play where, like you said, Joe, because of the injuries, you have Jonathan Owens in the game. Carrington Valentine is playing part of the bunch. And Rizool is yelling for someone to swap the receivers. And he gets picked off by three different guys. And everyone's like, oh, Rizool sucks. He got burned. It's like, Rizool didn't have a chance unless he ran through five different people.
Defensive Strategies: Tackling Injuries and Strong Offenses
00:42:44
Speaker
And it's those kind of things where it's like, yeah, injuries, but also,
00:42:50
Speaker
that's a fundamental breakdown on your defense. And the thing you worry about going into this game against the Vikings is, yes, there's no Justin Jefferson, but Cousins is still throwing for like a gazillion yards a game. And
00:43:08
Speaker
this, you know, there was quote unquote defensive success against two of the worst offenses in the, you know, two, well, one mid tier in the, in the Broncos and one, what was a bad offense in the Raiders. And yeah, they quote unquote had success, but against the two more explosives, explosive offenses on your schedule, you gave up 25 and 27 points and that's not a lot or 34, whatever you gave up to the lions, but you gave a 27 and a half to them. So it's like,
00:43:37
Speaker
Okay, like, yeah, I guess you're holding down the good, the bad offenses, which sure, that's the signs of a decent defense, but against the two better offenses that you faced, you've gotten walked up and down the field again, you know, at certain points of the game. So I don't have much more to really say on the defense, you know, on Barry's coaching than that is like, okay, it, you know, it,
00:44:01
Speaker
Like, yeah, it's another, you know, Perron was kind of saying how you can't, you know, Barry shouldn't be the guy that you're pointing to for this game. And there's some truth in that. But at the same time, it's not to say that his defense is working so well that it's without reproach or anything like that. Like I said, we'll preview it when we do the preview of the Vikings game. But there are still questions. And you see some leaky plays here and there. And you still see, like I was tweeting out the whole first drive,
00:44:32
Speaker
I didn't think Carrington Valentine was that bad today, but his game looks so bad because he gave up three first down throws on, you know, he gave up three third down conversions. But to me, that makes you makes me point and go, okay, well, you put a five foot 11 corner on a six foot four receiver.
00:44:51
Speaker
And I don't care if that was Ja. We've seen Ja. That's one of the big negatives on Ja's play is that he struggles with big receivers. You have a six foot two corner in Razool who's really good.
00:45:05
Speaker
Yeah, I know that you're running mostly zone and that Denver can cross, you know, that's how they got the touchdown. But it's like the fact that you're not even matching, you know, some to some degree pre-snap that you're just allowing them to walk a six foot four guy on your five foot 11 corner when you have a tall corner to match up on them.
00:45:23
Speaker
that's the kind of stuff where it's like it's the same old shit and yeah it worked out today but they couldn't get a stop when the offense finally got a lead back uh you know it was too little too late and denver was able to kick a not very you know it was a 52 yarder but in denver especially that's not that long of a field goal and so
00:45:44
Speaker
You know, the scoring numbers look nice again, but in reality it doesn't really add up and it paints sort of a false picture in my opinion. But like I said, you can't go yelling at Barry because his unit by default played better than the offense in this game. And that's kind of all I've really got to say about the defense today.
00:46:07
Speaker
Well, and you know, you can't blame Barry when your offense isn't giving your defense a rest either. You can't let your offense go out there and go three and out, you know, half the game and expect the defense to hold their end up the whole time. Trust me, I'm an Iowa fan and that's a thing we've been dealing with for the last three years or longer is you can't just rely on your defense to do what your offense should be doing too.
00:46:33
Speaker
But I've got a question and nobody could answer it for me when I post it on Twitter. But do we know who the two call ups from the practice squad were for this week? I don't know if they had one honestly this week because I didn't. The big one, the roster move I saw was
00:46:55
Speaker
or not elevating, but adding Stokes back to the 53 men and what's it called? They released Justin Holland. Yeah, Justin Holland. So I don't remember if they actually had a call up, but... Okay, so maybe they didn't, then that's maybe why I couldn't find anything on it. So here's what I would be doing for next week. I would be calling Jonathan Ford's ass up and getting him to be in the middle there.
00:47:23
Speaker
Is he going to be better? No. But to me, it looks like even with the uncertainty of what's going on with Devontae Wyatt, which looks like could be another knee injury, you know, who knows could be, you know, something as simple as a meniscus, you know, sprain or whatever. But, you know, he got up, blocked off the field, but then they carded him back to the locker room. So we don't know.
00:47:50
Speaker
Carl Brooks has looked all right. Kobe Wooden has looked all right. But they're a bit undersized. So you really need another beefy guy. And here's my thing.
00:48:03
Speaker
You can also rely on just TJ Slayton as your big, beefy guy. And that's what they've been kind of doing. Kenny Clark has been hot and cold lately. You know, there's moments where he flashes his ability and other moments he gets washed away. Now, is that because, you know, he's not getting any help, you know, whatever. I don't know, but.
00:48:25
Speaker
That tells me they need another big beefy body. And we saw that Jordan or Jonathan Ford had the ability when he got the chance in the preseason. We've talked about it before where he looked good. The coaches were talking about him, unprompted. And, you know, all that good stuff. It's time to, you know, bring him, you know, at least use a call up on him and say, hey, you got three with him still. So yeah, yeah. And like you said, it just makes too much sense with Wyatt.
00:48:55
Speaker
The way that he got carted off, he's probably missing at least the game. So especially because he went into the game with the knee, like, right. That was on the injury report all week. So yeah.
00:49:05
Speaker
And so, you know, bring him up this one game because you know, Minnesota is going to run the ball.
Run Defense Woes: Can They Be Fixed?
00:49:12
Speaker
Yeah. Cousins is going to throw all over the place, but you know, realistically, Minnesota's bread and butter is, you know, you know, the run game. It's went all the way back to Adrian Peterson, Dalvin cook, you know, now it's Matt's and then whatever running back there using now, but they know what the Packers weaknesses, even if jaws back.
00:49:35
Speaker
this next week, which, you know, knock on wood, he is, but you know, whatever. They're still going to attack with the run game because they know the Packers can't defend.
00:49:46
Speaker
I hate to do this, but to quote Mr. Miyagi, no can defend. And that's pretty much what the Packers are doing right now. They can't defend the run. And they have their moments. I know you have on here the edges were actually kind of setting the edges on defense.
00:50:12
Speaker
But still, they were getting gas for good. It was missed tackle today. It was. Yeah, they had plays to be made. You know, I think there was one on I think on Javon. What was Javon T. Williams? Longest run of the day. Um.
00:50:26
Speaker
He had Kishan Nixon with a shot in the backfield to get him down and he just whiffs on the tackle attempt. You got a couple more opportunities like that where Williams broke for like 15 yards and stuff like that. And that's how you end up giving up, what is it? Almost six yards a pop on the ground.
00:50:50
Speaker
You know, it's here and there. And like I said, the most frustrating part of it is that you're seeing them set an edge. And like I pointed out in our notes for this pod is it's like the fact that we're seeing them, you know, whereas the first five games of the season, you didn't see it. And what do we mean by it is like, okay, the thing to look for is
00:51:09
Speaker
If you're on the edge, so if I'm on, if from the defensive point of view, if I'm on the left side, I want to engage with my right hand so that my left hand is free. And for all intensive purposes, you're like showing half your body to try and hem the running back back in. And we saw that for maybe the first time this season from
00:51:30
Speaker
every edge defender at some point. There were still some plays where they did that thing and especially when Roshan's on the field, they allow Roshan to go up the field and they scrape the inside linebacker to his side over and he's the edge setter. So we did see that a couple times. I think one of them was on one of the plays where Green Bay like got a stop for like one yard or something like that and Trent Green kind of made a note about how Roshan got in the backfield and
00:51:56
Speaker
It's just, to see it now, it brings up the point of, okay, so does that mean players were, you know, it's like, there's only like three or four things. Were they not coached to do it? Were they, and I mean, by their position coach, were the players just bucking it and saying, screw it, I'm just going to do, go after the quarterback? Or, and this is the one that I think is most of it, is,
00:52:21
Speaker
were guys just saying, you know, is the scheme that whole go defend the run on the way to the quarterback. And like I said,
00:52:31
Speaker
We'll never know, but we talked about it how you have two guys in Roshan and Lucas who coming out of college, their thing was they're dynamic athletes, but they set good edges in the run game. And the question is, will they develop as pass rushers? You see Roshan do this flip where now he's this pretty dynamic pass rusher who doesn't set the edge and Lucas
00:52:56
Speaker
Like I said, I thought it was more injury, but you even pointed out that he was getting a little too nosy and getting himself out of position on run defense. So that was frustrating to see. It's good in the sense that, okay, they're trying to do it, but then it begs into question, where the hell was it to start the season and last season and stuff? Grading Barry and the defense as a whole is a lot like grading love where
00:53:26
Speaker
Like you said, the offense has to protect the defense better. This defense was never built to keep the opponent to 10 points a game. As much as Jair kind of like joked about it that like, hey, we just can't give up touchdowns. We got to limit it to field goals only or stops.
00:53:46
Speaker
This was never going to be a defense to do that. They just don't play with, you know, as cliche as it sounds, defensive mentality is half the battle. You have a coach who preaches aggression, stopping the run. Your team is going to have that identity.
00:54:02
Speaker
The Packers defensive identity has been keep everything in front and make a tackle. And they can't even do the make a tackle part most of the time under both Petton and Barry. And you've seen the results of that in their playoff shortcomings and the past couple of years. That's where you get the whole Robert Saleh. At some point, you take them out to the deep water. They're going to drown. That's where those kind of things come out and stuff. And getting back to how I'm comparing Barry to Love is this like,
00:54:32
Speaker
Yes, the defense in a nutshell, it looked good, especially when you compare it to the offense.
00:54:41
Speaker
held up, you know, you can, we can parse hairs over whether they should have gotten a stop and gotten the ball back to the offense on the drive where Denver took the lead 19 to 17. But you hold a team under 20 points, you're expecting to win that game, especially against a team with as bad of a defense as Denver's. And at the same time, the reason I still bag on Barry is that the things that
00:55:06
Speaker
show up against good offenses, they're showing up against bad offenses. And it's not enough where the other team isn't even able to make enough plays, or they're making just enough plays to take a lead, but not enough to blow a game wide open. But when you see, like I said, putting the wrong corner on their big receiver,
00:55:32
Speaker
Like I said, they played better with their fronts today, but there were still times where Barry's lining guys up and getting outflanked pre-snap. Those are the kind of things that they're not going to necessarily kill you against a bad offense, but that's what leads to giving up 27 points and a half to the Lions, not being able to get a stop in the second half against the Falcons, things like that. So those are the ones where it's, you know,
00:55:59
Speaker
by points allowed, it's like a B plus A minus kind of grade. But I think it's gold shavings on the top. It's not real gold. You got a gold layer on top of rock kind of thing and stuff. And it's just paper machining over a lot of issues. They're not necessarily all things the packers are doing.
00:56:24
Speaker
the other team's offense being as bad as it is, is what's also contributing to the success of the Packers defense. And I think we're going to find out a lot about in the next couple few weeks. Westendorf, he had a tweet where it's like the next five games are Minnesota, the Rams,
00:56:44
Speaker
the Steelers, the Chargers and the Lions again. I know that, you know, the Steelers offense isn't great. The Rams have struggled. The Vikings have struggled, but those are teams that have the ability to take advantage of what Barry's system struggles with. So we're going to find out how real his, you know, points per game allowed is and stuff like that. Yeah, and I really don't have anything more to add than what you said, because it just it. It's like it's